by Fran Wilde
When the last of the bone eater had disappeared into the monster’s jaws, the mouth closed and the skymouth disappeared, save for a few silver glints that traced a curve of tentacle. Then we saw the shadow in the clouds below us, growing smaller.
“Never thought I’d see something like that,” Aliati said.
“Nor me.” We’d lost so much of what we knew from the city above already. No sky but the swirling clouds; no stars, no sun, nor moon, but the beams the clouds let through. Seeing the skymouth fight drove all I’d been taught to fear about the clouds from me like mist. We were here, in our new element, not dead, not lost. We would survive this. We had to survive this.
To do so, we’d need to do one thing that few besides scavengers had done before: to come back alive from deep within the clouds. “We can’t go back until we can convince the city that the Singers weren’t at fault,” I said. In the morning, we’d try to do that, when we found where the council fell.
“I think the city will figure that out eventually,” she said. “City needs its enemies right now. But it will be too late. It’s not like you can convene a vote from here.”
“Ouch.” She’d kept her eye on city politics.
“Scavengers trade in metal and gossip, Nat.”
The air was clear of giants now. Aliati and I marked the cave with pitons and another oil lantern, then scaled the ghost tower. Led the others down the tower’s side to the cave before the next fog rolled in.
“Someone will stand watch,” I said. “Always.” We would all look out for each other. Like scavengers did.
They agreed, each in turn. I chose first watch. Then we unrolled the robes Doran’s guards had offered us from Ezarit’s tier—patterns of sepia tones, flecked here and there with small glass beads. Ezarit’s favorite. Our small nest of thieves huddled close and finally slept. Outside the ghost cave, wind whistled and howled around the tower trunks.
18
COUNCIL FALL
In the morning, we flew east from the ghost cave in a dove formation, taking the Spire’s moss-covered wall close on our right wingtips as a guide. Overnight, the clouds had thickened around us, blocking much of the sunlight.
“The plain isn’t directly beneath the council tier,” Aliati had explained before we left, while tendrils of mist curled into the scavenger’s cave, lapping over our feet, and her game board. She’d laid her tools and string over the Gravity map to show us the arc of how the council fell. “The wind was strong, pushing everything towards Haim, but not that far. It’s about three verses of The Rise from where we leave the Spire, then a fast drop after two of the towers grow together.”
Thicker clouds gathered, casting all that we passed into shades of tea and moss against the white. Water beaded on our oil-proofed wings. Occasional wind licks tried to toss us, but we managed to keep fairly straight.
Ciel whistled “home,” from the formation’s center. I answered her, then heard Beliak whistle behind us, and Aliati in front. Last, Ceetcee, distantly, on the formation’s far wing.
The drop caught me nearly unawares. Just before, a broken tower’s center core had merged with the core of another tower. At first, it seemed their only link was a bridge between covered in sparing bone growth and hanging moss, but below that, the towers had thickened and grown close enough together that they formed a small ridge.
It was beautiful: the bridge, the ridge below it. I flew over the connected towers, and if Aliati hadn’t whistled “attention,” followed by “descend,” I would have kept flying and missed the valley entirely.
Instead we curved our wings, following Aliati’s shadowy form, and dove five tiers so fast my ears popped. I whistled to make sure everyone was still together. When I heard Ceetcee, then Beliak whistle back, though I couldn’t yet see them in the mist, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
Above us, the tower trunks rose, never-ending shadows, into the white, the blue sky a distant memory. Below, a series of ridges and towertops had connected, forming a valley. Scraps of silk fluttered in the higher reaches like Allmoons flags. As we passed close by one tower, circling for a place to land, I could see how the winds had brought most of the council platform’s fallen to rest here.
The silk scraps had been torn from wings by the jutting bone outcrops as they fell from the sky.
“We’re lower than even the ghost tower,” Aliati said to Ciel after we landed. “Go much lower than this and you can start feeling sick, so be careful.”
“Sick?” I asked, concerned.
“Especially if you descend fast. It’s a giddy kind of sick. There are stories about scavengers laughing themselves to death, if you believe it.” Aliati landed and signaled it was safe.
“Why isn’t the breeze completely shadowed?” Ceetcee asked once Aliati had showed us where to land. Her voice rang loud in the valley’s confines, and she dropped to a whisper at the end.
Aliati pointed to moss-draped vents, where the vegetation lifted in curls and arabesques as the breeze toyed with it. “Watch where you step. There’s abyss below, and not everything is solid.”
Ceetcee felt her way with her bone hook, sounding the ground before us. “This valley’s like a net strung between towers, almost,” she said as she walked. “Or a bridge, completely overgrown. Probably temporary too, if it never becomes bone encrusted.” Even in the dim light, she peered at the valley, fascinated by the possibilities.
My footwraps grew damp, and mist curled up our legs as we picked our way across the shadowed field, searching for answers. For survivors.
Beliak found another bone hook, fallen unbroken, and used it to help test the ground for safe passage. A stench deeper than the dank moss began to make my eyes water. It was nothing like anything I’d smelled in the towers.
“What is that?” Beliak said, keeping an eye on Ceetcee, who had turned pale.
“It’s going to get worse,” Aliati said. She tore a strip of silk from a bone spur and wrapped it around her nose and mouth.
On a nearby ridge, a gray-robed Singer hung, their Lawsmarkers-draped shoulders snagged on a bone spur. Before us, the valley’s dark surface bore the arcs and angles in shades that did not belong: blues and greens, yellows and a few darker hues. I jumped as Ciel’s small fingers wrapped around my hand for comfort. Squeezed. I squeezed back. Another Singer’s wingless form lay nearby.
“Not an attacker,” I said.
Ciel heard me. Answered, “No wings, only Lawsmarkers. And those make bad wings.”
Someone she held dear? I raised my eyebrows, and she shook her head. “The angry Singer from Grigrit, I think.” The one who’d laughed at us. She touched her eyelid and pointed up, remembering him.
Before us, there were so many more to remember.
Beliak waved, waited until we slogged our way across the soggy surface. At his feet, a blue robe, crumpled at odd angles. One broken gray wing, its mate torn off and dangling nearby. Hair matted with blood and dirt. “Wait here,” I told Ciel, and approached the body.
This time, the smell drove me back, gagging. While the valley’s winds had dissipated much of the odor of decay, it was still very strong.
Someone retched behind me. “I’m taking Ceetcee up higher,” Beliak called. He looked pretty green himself. “Where the air’s clearer.”
They began to ascend the ridge on foot, bent and miserable. Not for the first time, I wished they’d stayed safe, above.
I’d never smelled the dead up close, nor had any of us. No, I realized, that was a wrong assumption. Aliati seemed unfazed by the smell, and she’d known to put something over her nose and mouth. The scavenger moved through the field, peering at a form here, lifting a wing there.
Aliati had wrapped a scrap of her robe over the original silk scrap. Tearing two strips from my robe, I gave the first to Ciel and then covered my own face. The robe didn’t block the smell entirely, but it did reduce it a little. Even so, my eyes watered.
Aliati knelt and pulled at yellow silk, bright in the
gloom. She found a pocket in the robe she held, removed a laden purse.
“What are you doing?” A councilor’s purse?
Aliati put the sack, heavy with marks, into her satchel. “She won’t need it.” She pulled a knife sheath from a green-shaded arm.
“Stop that!” I shouted. There was a respectful way to treat a body, and this wasn’t it. In the city, the dead—if they weren’t lost to the clouds—were wrapped in their robes and flown to the city’s edge before they were released. They weren’t left to be picked over and robbed.
Ciel tugged at my hand. “A body doesn’t need tower marks, Nat.”
Aliati handed the corpse’s knife to Ciel. The girl mumbled thanks through her mask and slipped the haft into her belt. Then the scavenger looked at me. “We need weapons. Spare, undamaged wings. Anything we can find. Doesn’t matter who had it before the clouds took it.”
I’d thought scavengers mostly looked for their treasures on abandoned lowtowers, not among the fallen. Now we’d become scavengers and worse: monsters who picked clean the bones of the dead.
Aliati narrowed her eyes, as if she could read my expression above my mask. “You’ve gotten your hands dirty, some,” she said. “But you still don’t understand the clouds. We take what we need to survive here.”
She held up a second knife gleaned from the councilor’s form. I accepted it, sliding the glass blade into an empty space on my sheath. She moved nearer to the valley wall, and a bone spur there, where a body hung, wings still whole. Gently, Aliati unstrapped the wings from the body and lowered it to the ground.
I took a deep breath and walked through the smell until I could kneel by the gray wings, the crumpled robe. Carefully, I gripped where I thought shoulders should be and turned the form over. The face was a mess of green and blue, smashed bones and dried blood. But the skin bore no tattoos.
Another gray-winged body had come to rest nearby. I checked that one too: Skin was mottled by death and gravity. But neither the tattooist’s brush nor a skymouth’s ink had marked it.
“No tattoos anywhere,” I muttered. The body was big enough to be an adult. Graying hair. Not a fledge either. This was proof. Was it enough?
On the ridge, Ceetcee shouted and pointed. I followed the angle of her arm down and across the valley. Two bone eater chicks had dropped onto the moss. They ignored us, focusing instead on something lying in the ground.
A gryphon circled, waiting.
The birds were huge and black, but still small enough that we could chase them away. I knelt to grab arrows from a quiver, saw tower marks woven through hair, and recognized an acquaintance—a guard from Varu. I brushed her face with my hand, trying to close her eyes, quickly, but the lids wouldn’t budge. She stared at me, eyes cloudy, filled with ghosts.
“Forgive us,” I said, then turned my attention to the bone eaters. Their heads bobbed like needles, plucking and tearing. They grabbed something between them and pulled. Then one lifted, carrying a silk-draped object. Flew it high, past the gryphon, and dropped it with a crack against the bone ridge.
“They break the bones to get the marrow,” Aliati said, returning to my side. Ceetcee and Beliak were far enough away to be safe, and the second bone eater was still pulling at the form on the ground, when we heard shouting coming from that end of the valley. A wild-haired figure limped towards the bone eater, waving a spear and screaming, trying to drive the birds away.
I’d know that scream anywhere. “Kirit,” I whispered.
She had survived; we’d found her. Relief flooded me. I could tell Ezarit, when we found her, that Kirit was safe. I wanted to go to her, to put my arms around her, but she looked like she would strike down anything that touched her.
* * *
“Kirit!” Ciel yelled and lunged.
I grabbed Ciel’s robe and pulled her back. “Stay here!” The girl struggled and fought me until Beliak descended from the ridgeline and carried her away.
Aliati and I covered the distance to the bone eater chicks in long strides. Kirit didn’t turn. She waved her spear. Stumbled. Threw it at the nearest bone eater.
She missed, and the young bird opened its wings and flew away, bearing its find with it.
Kirit howled wordlessly at the departing bone eater. Then she turned on us.
She lived. Clouds. Kirit was alive, but her robes were splotched and greasy, and she stank. Her eyes were wide, too much white around the edges. From a distance, she’d looked like the Kirit I knew. Close up, I barely recognized her.
She stared at us. Turned her head when Ciel yelled, “Kirit!” from high above.
“Are you dead?” She finally spoke.
“No.” I held a hand out, palm up. “Not dead. Nor are you.”
She waved my hand away and turned back to the ground around her, muttering. One wing was askew, the other ripped. Gray silk fluttered from the batten, trailing her movements.
“We will help you, Skyshouter.” Aliati took Kirit’s left side, while I flanked her on the right. On this side, the bodies were fewer, but I saw a hand in the moss, pale and still. Farther off, two different colored robes tangled together, two fliers tumbled like lovers in a deathfall.
“What do you seek here?” My last dregs of hope for survivors faded with each new find. No one had survived here. The landing was too hard, and bodies and wingsets both bore scorch marks and burns. “How long have you been down here, Kirit?” I asked gently.
She kept her eyes on the ground, searching, but waved her hand and her fingers twitched. One, two. “They chased me from the bridge. Lost me in the ridgeline. I fell. I was trying to climb out when I heard a noise, something hit the valley. Then more.”
Her breath came in stitches. She stopped walking and put her hands on her knees. Waited for balance. “They fell all around me, Nat. They fell.”
I tried to touch her arm, to lift the horror from her, but she knocked my hand away. “Don’t!”
Slowly, she got to her feet again. Went back to searching, poking at the ground with her recovered spear. We joined her, walking the valley quietly with her. She never looked at me, but she sped up her pace to match ours.
Kirit’s eyes widened as she saw something in the shadows, near the valley wall. She limped faster, reaching the crumpled wings even as Aliati and I saw their pattern. Tea stained. A kestrel pattern.
“Ezarit,” Aliati whispered.
No.
* * *
We reached Kirit’s side as she lifted the crumpled wing, still locked for fighting. Beneath the silk, Ezarit’s body lay curled like she was sleeping.
Kirit collapsed to her knees.
“Mama.”
The word, a wail. She lifted one wrist and held it to her cheek. Rocked back and forth.
Ezarit.
All the valley fell away around me, the sound of rushing clouds, the void, the fall, enveloped me. The world was ended. We were in the clouds; we were like the dead. We were ended. Ezarit was gone.
Aliati knelt by the quilted robe. Lifted an edge.
I yelled, “Not Ezarit!” and grabbed at Aliati’s shoulder. She would not steal from Ezarit. Never.
Through my tears, I saw Kirit look up, face streaked and pale. She stared at me, then Aliati. Kirit’s fingers wrapped around a knife hilt in the belt of her robe, and she drew it slowly out. “Get away from her.”
She meant both of us.
“Kirit.”
“Get away!” She rose to one knee, tried to stand. Collapsed again, her blade on the ground beside her, her face buried in her mother’s robe, sobbing.
I wheeled on Aliati. But the scavenger, the wingfighter, the woman who had led us into the clouds had reached for Ezarit’s robes again.
“Look,” she said.
A knife hilt stuck from Ezarit’s back. Blood caked the tea-colored robe around the wound.
“She didn’t fall. Someone killed her.” Aliati grabbed for the blade, but Kirit slapped her hand away.
“We will find out who did this,�
�� Kirit whispered. “I promise.”
The skies had darkened over the valley, and I couldn’t see Beliak and Ceetcee anymore. We’d been down here too long. We’d found proof the attackers hadn’t been Singers; we’d found a survivor, and a murdered councilor, but it wasn’t enough. Now we needed to find our way out of the valley.
Kirit began keening. A horrible sound, her rough voice tore the air with her pain.
“Shhhh,” I tried to calm her.
“Let her,” Aliati said. “Let her say good-bye.”
Loss echoed through the valley. I closed my eyes against it, but it seeped through my ears, my skin. I echoed Kirit’s promise in my mind. We’ll find who did this.
I meant the knife. I meant the council platform. I meant the broken city.
“Nat,” Aliati whispered, “open your eyes. Hurry.”
I opened them a crack. Wiping tears away on my sleeve, I spotted a soft glow over my robe cuff. Another, at the edge of my vision. At my feet, Kirit raised her face from her mother’s robe. Her mourning quieted, but did not stop.
A soft light pulsed the cloudscape. On the nearest ridge, two orbs glowed a diffuse blue. Kirit’s voice stilled in her throat, surprised. The lights faded.
“Don’t stop,” Aliati said. Kirit looked up at her, angry. But Aliati gasped. “Your face. Your skin is on fire. Blue fire.”
It wasn’t fire. Kirit’s tattoos and scars shimmered, like the skymouth had against the clouds. Not a lot, but enough to scare Aliati.
She raised her hands. The mark traced in skymouth ink on her hand, and those more organic scars left by the veins and seams of the skymouth skin she’d draped over herself had a bluish glow to them.
“Sing, if you can, Kirit?” Aliati said.
Kirit looked at Aliati with dead eyes. “How can I sing now? Ever?”
The blue glow faded around us. Her tattoos faded too. I remembered the few blue pulses I’d seen in the clouds, thinking I’d imagined them. I’d never seen their like in the city above. This was something the clouds kept for themselves.
